1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer user interface system and method for the purpose of browsing through documents stored in a computer. Specifically, the present invention facilitates the browsing of a document stored in a computer in such a way that it allows a rapid view of what contents are present and the organization of the material in the document, as well as rapid access to the items in the document involved.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Currently, the method for viewing documents stored in a computer is through a computer monitor screen. For documents that are longer/larger than can be contained within one screen, a means is provided to scroll the document up and down or to jump to a particular point in the document (through the use of, for example, a xe2x80x9cmousexe2x80x9d coupled with scroll bars at the edges of the document displayed on the screen or through the use of hypertext links).
However, most people do not find this a particularly convenient way to view a document, as compared with a book. That this is true is evidenced in the fact that despite the fact that the computer has been in increasing use, there is not only no corresponding reduction in paper use, but an increase in paper quantity is required to print what is conveniently stored in a computer that can be seemingly easily and flexibly manipulated for viewing. Sometimes the printed version of the information involved is necessary, like in the case of printing a picture on a sheet of paper to be pasted on some surface (e.g., a wall), or in the case of the convenience of having a relatively light, hardy paperback book for reading in almost any possible situation and location, but there are times when a reader is quite happy to sit at a desk in front of a desktop computer or handle a notebook computer away from the desk, and yet the reader would still prefer a printed version of the document in a hand-held format. This is especially true in the case of looking through manuals, including software manuals, to understand how to operate a device or software application. The irony is that computer software packages usually come with thick and heavy manuals containing information which can easily be stored on a light-weight CD-ROM, and even if the manuals are sometimes dispensed in the form of a CD-ROM, more often than not people would print them out into a hard-copy format in order to facilitate reading.
What is involved when one interacts with the printed material in a book is a subtle and complicated process. To start with, material in a book is presented in a sequential order, with a continuity of material from page to page, and there is also a hierarchical structure in the material presented (as the material is organized into chapters, sections, subsections, etc.) because ideas in the material are related to each other in some kind of conceptual hierarchy. The human perceptual system inputs data in a sequential manner, and after a book is read from the beginning to the end in a sequential fashion, the brain then recreates the conceptual hierarchy after viewing the material involved. However, very often one does not read a book (or input the material involved) from the beginning to the end because (a) one wants to have an overview of the material present; (b) one is searching for something of interest to him/her; or (c) one is interested in reading only portions of the book (in the case of, say, reading the manual to understand how to operate something). In these cases, one browses through the subject book to find the material of unique interest to that reader.
Two basic things are achieved in the browsing process. First, the browser has a glimpse of what are the contents of the book document. Second, the browser has an idea of approximately where the items of interest are so that the browser can (a) return to look for them later when needed, and (b) have an understanding of the relationships between the material currently being viewed and other material (i.e., an understanding of the hierarchical structure involved). When browsing a book document, many finger-operations are required of the browser in order to flip through the pages and, together with the inherent sequential order imposed by the pages, very quickly allow the browser to have an understanding of the nature, location and organization of the material involved. In the process of browsing through a book, one can perform the following operations:
(a) flip through the pages at varying speeds depending on the level of detail at which one wishes to view the material in the book;
(b) jump to the approximate location of the item of interest;
(c) change the direction of flipping (forward or backward) very rapidly because
(i) one would like to compare and contrast material on different pages,
(ii) after jumping to an approximate location of some items of interest one would like to find their exact locations, or
(iii) one is unsure of where the item of interest is and is in the process of searching for it; and
(d) mark the locations of some pages of interest that one may want to later return.
All these operations are performed very rapidly with the fingers interacting with the flipping pages and with minimal unnecessary movements of the fingers and hands. Interestingly, a book/magazine with soft and flexible pages is harder to handle because more finger and hand movements are needed to browse through it, while books with stiff pages can be browsed with almost no movement of the hand.
In currently available methods of browsing through documents stored in a computer, e.g., the use of a mouse combined with scroll bars and buttons on the computer screen, more movements of the hands are necessary to effect the various operations described above. Also, fine control of the hand or fingers (depending on whether the mouse uses hand movement to move the cursor on the screen or finger movement like in the case of a track ball) is necessary to position the cursor on the screen at the required places. The process is both lengthy and clumsy. The lengthiness of the process taxes the human short term memory""s ability to remember items encountered in the recent past for the purpose of establishing the relationships between items and the clumsiness of the process creates distraction and interferes with the short term memory process, a well known effect in perceptual psychology.
Because material in a book is organized into pages, it also enhances the ability of the reader to better remember the location of various portions of the material involved. Also, unlike the process of scrolling through a document on a screen like what is normally done in a word-processor, wherein the contents become a blur and reading is impossible, when one moves through the material in a book through flipping, one is still able to read at least the approximate contents, if not the details. It is due to these features that a person browsing through a book can acquire a good understanding of its contents, the location of specific items and organization of the material.
It is because of the reasons set forth above, people still prefer to read a book in their hands, rather than a document image displayed on a computer screen using currently available methods.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,102 (Kuno et al.) discloses a device for document viewing that consists of two display screens. One of the purposes of using two display screens is to allow the user to display two different pages from the document so that they can be read side-by-side (e.g., a diagram and its textual explanation). Another purpose is to allow a large picture to be displayed simultaneously on both pages. The Kuno et al. device allows users to change the speed of movement through the document through a pressure sensorxe2x80x94the more pressure applied, the faster the pages in the document are moved through. The Kuno et al. device also allows the document to be viewed in the forward or backward direction by pressing on a forward sensor area or a reverse sensor area respectively. One can also select a page to jump to by pressing on an icon displayed on the screen. However the Kuno et al. device still does not provide the same convenience as browsing through a book, primarily because when switching between the operations for different controlsxe2x80x94the speed of movement through the document, the change of direction of viewing, and the jumping to different parts of the documentxe2x80x94there are a lot more hand and finger movements than is the case in manipulating a physical book. Moreover, the Kuno et al. device is a specialized, relatively costly device with sensors and hardware built onto two display screens, whereas the present inventor recognizes that a lower cost and more practical device would be one that adds modularly to the existing computer system.
Currently, there are also computer mice that can eliminate the above-mentioned problem of positioning cursor on the computer screen with a conventional mouse (i.e., fine control of the hand or fingers is needed). These mice allow the user to specify xe2x80x9chot locationsxe2x80x9d on the screen on which the cursor xe2x80x9chomes ontoxe2x80x9d with less fine control than conventional mice. Furthermore, a subset of these mice can generate xe2x80x9cvertical onlyxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9chorizontal onlyxe2x80x9d movement of the cursor so that the scrolling process requires less fine control of the muscle than is required with a conventional mouse. These mice eliminate some, but not all, of the problems associated with the conventional methods of computer input as far as computer-based document browsing is concerned.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,575 (1995) McTaggart discloses an electronic book that comprises laminated sheets bound together in the form of a book on each of these sheets, printed material is arranged on the top layer and below that layer is an electronic backdrop containing thin light-emitting diodes (LED""s) and pressure sensitive switches affixed onto a backing sheet. The LED""s generate visual signals that can be seen through the top layer for the purpose of highlighting parts of the printed material. The pressure switches, positioned under certain items in the printed material, are for the purpose of sensing the user""s selection of those items. A speaker is also provided on the book to generate audio signals for explaining the text or giving t he user audio feedback. Contact or photo-sensitive switches are also embedded in the pages to allow the electronic circuits to know which pages are currently being viewed, so that the appropriate audio and visual signals can be generated. Even though this apparatus is in a form that allows a person to handle it like handling a typical book, with visual and audio enhancements of the printed material as well as facilities that accept the user""s feedback, it is basically a hard-wired device that is not reprogrammable and different hardware has to be configured for books with different contents. No provision is available for downloading document files from a computer for display on the electronic book nor is the electronic book able to display any arbitrary document file. This device is hence not suitable for browsing through documents stored in a computer.
Therefore, the inventor has identified there exists a need for a low-cost, modular device that can be connected to existing computer systems and that permits easy, effective computer-based document browsing that approaches that of browsing through a book.
In view of the aforementioned short-comings of presently available schemes for browsing through documents stored in a computer, one objective of the present invention is to provide a browsing device that exploits the use of finger operations normally involved in browsing through a book, namely, the change of speed of movement through the document involved, the change of direction of movement through the document, the jumping to other portions of the document, and the bookmarking of pages (e.g., when a page is bookmarked, it can be returned/jumped to later very quickly by using the controls operated by the fingers).
Another objective of the invention is that the positioning and design of the controls for the above-mentioned operations performed by the fingers are such that they allow almost no movement of the hand and minimal movements of the fingers, thus maximizing the ease of browsing through the stored document. The dexterity of the human fingers is to be fully exploited for these controls.
A further objective of the invention is to provide a low cost, modular browsing device that can be easily attached to existing computer systems much like how a mouse attaches to a computer system.
Still a further objective is to provide a reconfigurable construct for the browsing device so that it can be (a) configured into a hand-held controller; (b) attached to the sides of existing computer screens; (c) configured to cooperate with a mouse so that there is no need to move the user""s hand(s) when switching between browser-related operations and mouse-related operations; and (d) configured to cooperate with a gyro-mouse so that the entire assembly can be used in the absence of a table top. The method is chosen by the user depending on his/her preference.
Another objective of the invention is to provide a means to display, on the computer screen, the document to be browsed through using the browsing device. The display is in the form of a computer book together with showing the thicknesses of material in the document before and after the currently viewed material, showing of the bookmarks, and showing, on the thicknesses, of the location of the pages that would be jumped to at any given time if jumping were to be effected.
Another objective of the invention is to provide the following five methods of organizing the material in the document and corresponding display formats: (a) organized into pages and can be flipped through page by page from right to left or vice versa, much like what happens when one flips through a book; (b) organized into pages and can be flipped through page by page from bottom to top or vice versa, much like what happens when one flips through a notepad; (c) organized into pages and slid through page by page from right to left or vice versa much like what happens when one views a microfilm; (d) organized into pages that can be flashed one after another; (e) organized so to be scrolled through, with no distinct page boundaries, much like what is normally done in a word-processor. The first three methods incur more cost in terms of storage space and processing time, but when used together with the aforementioned browsing device result in a browsing process that most resembles that of browsing through a book, a notepad, or a micro-film. The last two methods demand less storage space and reduced processing time, and even though these two methods do not precisely emulate the book-browsing process, they can still benefit from the rapidity of finger control effected on the browsing device.
Another objective of the invention is to provide simultaneous multiple indexing in conjunction with the inventive browsing system. When a keyword of interest is encountered during the reading of the document, the user selects it using a cursor on the screen in conjunction with a pointing device such as a mouse, like what is normally done in current computer systems, or using his/her finger in conjunction with a touch or pressure sensing screen, or other methods. In response, the pages on which explanations or other issues related to this keyword reside are bookmarked by the inventive system, after which the user can quickly flip to one of these pages using the mechanisms provided in the browsing system.
Another objective of the invention is to use the above-mentioned browsing facility in conjunction with other software that can reorganize the material in the document involved to facilitate browsing/viewingxe2x80x94for example, the positioning of material for comparison side by side on the pages currently being viewed.
Another objective of the invention is to use the above-mentioned browsing facility in conjunction with software that can highlight selected portions of the material or annotate on the pages in the document involved to facilitate browsing/viewing/reading.
Yet another objective of the invention is to provide the above-mentioned browsing facility to a word processor to facilitate the entering, processing, and viewing/browsing of material in a word processor.
Another objective of the invention is to provide the above-mentioned browsing facility to any software in which information cannot be fitted within one computer screen for viewing or manipulating.
Yet another objective of the invention is to provide a new metaphorxe2x80x94the xe2x80x9clibrary metaphorxe2x80x9dxe2x80x94to the computer operating system""s human interface in which information on the computer screen which is traditionally presented in the form of windows can now be presented in the form of xe2x80x9cbooksxe2x80x9d.
The above-mentioned objects can also be achieved by providing a browsing device for browsing through document that includes, a top surface, a sensor surface and a bottom surface. A sensor area on the sensor surface detects the position of a finger along one direction and the force of the finger on the sensor area. The browsing device also includes four buttons/on-off switches on the bottom surface, and four additional buttons/on-off switches on the said top surface,
FIG. 2D is a front perspective view of the browsing device configured into a gyro-mouse configuration used in conjunction with a computer.
FIG. 2E is a front perspective view of the browsing device configured into a one-hand configuration used in conjunction with a computer.
FIG. 2F is a front perspective view of the browsing device configured into a one-hand-gyro-mouse configuration used in conjunction with a computer.
FIG. 3 is a top perspective view of a computer book displayed on a screen that is to be browsed through using browsing device of the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a flowchart that details the mechanisms for jumping to other parts of the document being viewed/browsed through and movement through a document under the control of the thumb on the browsing device of present invention.
FIG. 5A is an top perspective view of the computer book of the present invention that uses a flipping method of moving through a document.
FIG. 5B is a top view of the computer book of the present invention that uses a sliding method of moving through a document.
FIG. 5C is a top view of the computer book of the present invention that uses a flashing method of moving through a document.
FIG. 5D is a top view of the computer book of the present invention that uses a scrolling method of moving through a document. each of which is operated by the fingers. An electrical circuit converts the force and position of the finger on the sensor area as detected by the force and position sensors on that area into electrical forms and outputs them. The electrical circuit also outputs the on/off states of the four buttons/on-off switches on the bottom surface, and four additional buttons/on-off switches on the said top surface.